noble? Have you not repaired the wrong you
may have done your nephew Carobert, by bringing his younger son Andre
to your kingdom and marrying him to Joan, your poor Charles's elder
daughter? Will not they inherit your crown?"

"Alas!" cried Robert, with a deep sigh, "God is punishing me perhaps for
thinking too late of this just reparation. O my good and noble Sandra,
you touch a chord which vibrates sadly in my heart, and you
anticipate the unhappy confidence I was about to make. I feel a gloomy
presentiment--and in the hour of death presentiment is prophecy--that
the two sons of my nephew, Louis, who has been King of Hungary since
his father died, and Andre, whom I desired to make King of Naples, will
prove the scourge of my family. Ever since Andre set foot in our castle,
a strange fatality has pursued and overturned my projects. I had hoped
that if Andre and Joan were brought up together a tender intimacy would
arise between the two children; and that the beauty of our skies, our
civilisation, and the attractions of our court would end by softening
whatever rudeness there might be in the young Hungarian's character;
but in spite of my efforts all has tended to cause coldness, and even
aversion, between the bridal pair. Joan, scarcely fifteen, is far ahead
of her age. Gifted with a brilliant and mobile mind, a noble and lofty
character, a lively and glowing fancy, now free and frolicsome as a
child, now grave and proud as a queen, trustful and simple as a young
girl, passionate and sensitive as a woman, she presents the most
striking contrast to Andre, who, after a stay of ten years at our court,
is wilder, more gloomy, more intractable than ever. His cold, regular
features, impassive countenance, and indifference to every pleasure that
his wife appears to love, all this has raised between him and Joan a
barrier of indifference, even of antipathy. To the tenderest effusion
his reply is no more than a scornful smile or a frown, and he never
seems happier than when on a pretext of the chase he can escape from the
court. These, then, are the two, man and wife, on whose heads my crown
shall rest, who in a short space will find themselves exposed to every
passion whose dull growl is now heard below a deceptive calm, but which
only awaits the moment when I breathe my last, to burst forth upon
them."

"O my God, my God!" the queen kept repeating in her grief: her arms fell
by her side, like the arms of a statue weeping by